Lies, Damn Lies and Bartlet For America
by starbucksgal
Summary: "I want to be able to comfort my son in tragedy, and I want to be able to celebrate with him in triumph, and for all the times in between, I just want to be able to look him in the eye." Josh and Jed post-ep for Two Cathedrals.


DISCLAIMER  
If I owned the West Wing, believe me when I say that you would know about it. Until then, assume that I relinquish all ownership to ABS and that I would prefer to not be sued. My bank balance isn't big enough to justify it. Senator Rumpson was the Republican challenger to the Shepherd administration in The American President, so I guess he belongs to Mr Sorkin too. I did ask Santa to give me Josh for Christmas, but the sunglasses and the attitude and the hot were not forthcoming.  
  
SPOILERS  
Crackpots and These Women, In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, Noel, Two Cathedrals, and Bartlet For America.  
  
SUMMARY  
"I want to be a comfort to my son in times of tragedy, and I want to be able to celebrate with him in times of triumph, and for all the times in between, I just want to be able to look him in the eye." Josh and Jed post-ep for 2C, little bit of Josh/Donna toward the end. Mostly Josh POV.   
  
A/N  
Despite the title being a play on 'Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics' and 'Bartlet For America' and the fact that there are spoilers for at least the latter in here, the actual fic has really nothing to do with either episode.  
  
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS  
To Jed Bartlet and Josh Lyman, as well as their real life alter egos Martin Sheen and Brad Whitford. For the inspiration.   
  
  
Lies, Damn Lies and Bartlet For America  
  
  
Donna calls me a compulsive fidgeter. She admonishes me for it at least six times a day. I drove the medicos in GW up the wall last summer when I was recovering from that thing at Rosslyn where I got, you know, sort of shot a little bit. I was supposed to stay still, but you know me by now. I'd rather be in pain than not moving or quiet. I had tension to work off, what with Donna's rules and the minor fact that I was literally banned from work for three months. I did once try, as you no doubt remember, to work off a certain degree of tension by sticking my hand through a window. Bad idea. It hurt. Also confirmed Donna's suspicions that I was psychiatrically unstable and basically suicidal, and, along with that small matter of yelling at the leader of the free world, landed me in a Christmas Eve meeting with Stanley and his sidekick from the ATVA.   
  
Anyway. With Donna safely stowed away in my office on the other side of the building, I figure I can indulge in my stress-reducing activities in peace. No such luck. Charlie's been eyeing me nervously for the past few minutes.  
  
"Josh, you're making me nervous."  
  
Distinct possibility. I manage to stand still for thirty-nine seconds before I resume walking in circles. If the President doesn't let me into the Oval Office in the next five minutes, I will absolutely not be held responsible for my actions. I'm sorry. I'm the first member of the Senior Staff to have been called over here in two hours, which means I'm the first one of us, including Leo, to see him since that press conference. Added to which, the omnipresent sight of Mrs L's desk is doing little to improve my demeanour. I notice Charlie beginning to get edgy again, but he chooses not to comment. The door into the Oval opens before he's forced to decide between throwing random objects and calling the 82nd Airborne.   
  
"Come on in, Josh."  
  
I'm noticing all those things that everyone who comes into the Oval Office tries not to notice, and that most of us don't notice anymore. Like the Kennedy desk and the Presidential seal. This afternoon I realized how close we came not only to losing the White House, but how close we came to giving up without even fighting. It's answer B. It's gonna be a long time before I forget saying those words, no matter what the outcome.   
  
"We could still lose," he reminds me. "We may not even get the Democratic nomination."  
  
Okay, so, Josiah Bartlet can read me like a book. Even so, I shudder at the implications of his second remark.  
  
"The public would rather see a man who lied about a degenerative illness…" He winces, but I ignore that. "… running the country than put Hoynes in here."  
  
"You really don't like that man, do you?"  
  
"Due respect, sir. Who would you say is the second most powerful man in the country?"  
  
"Leo," he answers promptly.  
  
"Exactly." I sit back. "No, sir, I don't like Hoynes, and if you take a look around, you'll notice that I'm not the only one. On this side of the building, we like to pretend that he doesn't exist."  
  
"Did you love your father, Josh?"  
  
"Very much."  
  
"Was he a good man?"  
  
I blink . "He was seventy-two years old and suffering from terminal cancer." I'm not sure where this conversation is going, but I keep right on talking. "He went to work at seven and came home at eight, and at the weekend he cleaned out the gutters and scolded the squirrels. He loved his children. He kept loving Joanie, even after she was gone. He and my mom were crazy about each other right up until the day he died. Yes, sir." I swallow. "He was a good man."  
  
"He liked that you were in politics, but he woulda liked grandchildren more," he remembers. "He liked that you were working for me. You think that, after these last few weeks, he would still like that?"  
  
"He would have been disappointed," I answer frankly. "But he wouldn't have taken it personally, and he would have seen that it was something private. He would've taken it like Donna," I add.   
  
"You didn't want me to quit, Josh, did you?"  
  
"No, sir." I lean forward in my chair and stop myself just short of grabbing his hand. "Sir, I think we should see this as an opportunity. Our polling numbers are gonna go down, we know that, Joey Lucas told us that. But she told me a thing about numbers…" I wave my hand and choose not to elaborate, not wishing to get into a discussion about dialing down the rhetoric on hate crimes, and wishing even less to get into a thing about Donna's feelings for me and whether I reciprocate them. "The numbers will tell us that a majority of the American people will not support you through re-election because you have this…"  
  
"It's called MS, Josh, get used to it. Astute observation, and it's supposed to cheer me up how?"  
  
"What the numbers don't tell us is that the reason they won't support you is because they know almost nothing about relapsing-remitting MS. Sir," I lick my lips nervously. "This is going to be extremely difficult for me to say because it involves me admitting my wrongness. You were right to not tell the public in the election. Your voice wasn't big enough; you were a Democratic governor from New Hampshire, and all they would've heard would've been the words multiple sclerosis. It's different now. We can educate the public about this disease, we can turn this thing round, and we can win it."  
  
"Your father was a good man," he muses, causing me to wonder if he's heard anything I've said. "There's something I've never told you, Josh. My father is a sanctimonious Republican prick who could not and can not stand the thought of his sons having minds of their own."  
  
"Republican?" I squawk.  
  
I'm the most partisan Democrat in Washington DC and I may have infected my assistant. Deal with it.   
  
"I notice that the sanctimonious prick part doesn't bother you so much."  
  
"It's redundant." I reply automatically. "But you! Spawned from a Republican!" I think I may have said that sentence much the same way as normal people say the words 'Spawned from Satan'.  
  
"It surprised me, too."  
  
"Your mom?"  
  
"Voted Republican because he did."  
  
"So how did you… you know…"  
  
"I met Delores Landingham," he tells me with a tiny smile. "She brought my fighting spirit out."  
  
I feel I should say something, but it would take Sam or Toby for anything even approaching adequate, so I keep my mouth shut. What could I say? We all miss her? She was a good woman? It would be like someone trying to convey sympathy to me if, God forbid, anything were to happen to Donna.   
  
"She was above reproach," he says sadly. "She died above reproach, but she'll be arguing with St Peter at the gates of heaven."  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
Dr Bartlet Sr turned off the television. CNN, S-SPAN, ABC, and more or less every network on mainstream US television had been playing those clips forever. The President of the United States had been diagnosed eight years ago with a relapsing-remitting course of multiple sclerosis. The President of the United States would be seeking a second term and he was gonna win. The older man snorted. Josiah Bartlet had been hailed as 'The Real Thing' by Democrats three years ago, the bringing of honesty and integrity back into American politics. Once they realized how he had lied to them, his image of integrity would be wiped and even the Democrats would defect to the right-wing rather than vote for a man like this. Ann Stark would get Senator Rumpson into the White House.   
  
It was time for his weekly poker game. Time to meet his Republican friends, make a few derisive comments about Democrats, be vocal about their support for Senator Rumpson and his Chief of Staff, and settle down to his game of poker and his glass of bourbon. Nobody would know that President Bartlet was his son.   
  
He wasn't sure when it had happened, the unwinding of his family. Some would say that it had happened the first year Jed had been elected to the House of Representatives. Some would believe that it had been the day Jed met Leo McGarry. Others would go even further back in time and say that it had been the day Delores Landingham had joined the staff of his school. The truth was, the actual unwinding couldn't be traced back to one particular day. It had happened slowly. Dr Bartlet had had a relatively normal, if slightly strained, relationship with his younger son. They had been on speaking terms when Jed was in the House, and even when he was the Governor of New Hampshire. The young Dr Bartlet had just preferred to keep his private life private, and nobody had known anything about it other than that his wife's name was Abigail and that he had three daughters - Elizabeth, Eleanor, and Zoey.   
  
The breaking of the ties, though - that could be traced to one month. November 1997 in Concord. His son and daughter-in-law had gone to dinner at Patsy's. He had known about that. The next day, Jed came to visit, which was unusual enough in itself, and had told him that they had had dinner with Leo McGarry. Dr Bartlet had never liked Leo, who he thought was a freeloading jerk from a family with a history of alcoholism, had liked him even less when Jed had supported him through Sierra-Tucson for alcohol problems, and had thrown the remote control at the television eighteen months ago when CNN had reported that an investigation into White House drug use had revealed that the White House Chief of Staff had been in rehabilitation for Valium use during his time as Secretary of Labor. Nonetheless, he had nodded curtly at his son and asked how his friend was. Jed had produced a crumpled cocktail napkin with three words written on it in ballpoint pen.  
  
Bartlet For America.  
  
They had argued. They had released almost fifty years of pent-up hostility and partisanship. Then Jed had left and hit the campaign trail, and that was the last time he spoke to his father. Dr Bartlet watched the initial campaign get minimal coverage on the networks, with two senior staff members. Jed would be flanked by Leo and by a man named Toby Ziegler. The politicos started to sit up and take notice when Josh Lyman had left his job as John Hoynes' Chief of Staff to become Bartlet's Senior Political Director. Not long afterwards, the first woman had joined, a woman named CJ Cregg, followed by another man with a lawyer's jaw and Californian good looks. Sam Seaborn. Dr Bartlet had watched his son accept the Democratic nomination for the Presidency on the night of the Illinois Primary on C-SPAN.  
  
~*~*~*~  
  
"That was the night my father died," I remember. "You came to the airport and you offered…"  
  
"To come to Connecticut with you. I remember. You should have let me come with you, Josh. You should have… God, I felt so guilty about leaving you there at the gate."  
  
"Why?" I prop my chin in my hands. This is something that's bugged me ever since. "You hated me, you barely knew my name - hell, you didn't know my name. Why did you offer to drop everything and fly to Connecticut with me?"  
  
"You were the political mastermind behind Bartlet For America."  
  
"So I've been told," I grin.   
  
"You know, Josh, the fact that you were the political mastermind behind Bartlet For America's going to make this thing that much harder on you. Nobody's going to believe that I didn't tell you."  
  
"You didn't tell me."  
  
"I'm sorry…"  
  
"You don't have to apologize," I cut him off. "I'm just saying - maybe nobody is going to believe that you didn't tell me, but they can believe whatever the hell they want because it's the truth. But you don't have to apologize. To the American public, or to me. You don't have to apologize to the public because it was personal, it didn't affect your presidency or their lives, and frankly, your personal life is none of their business contrary to popular belief. And you don't have to apologize to me because… because you just don't. Because I'm not the one with MS, a wife, three kids, and a country to run."  
  
"I'm sorry, Josh, really I am. And I have to say that to you because I have to come into work every day for the next five and a half years and see your face. You five - you, Leo, CJ, Toby, Sam - you're my family. Leo is my brother and has been since the day I met him. And you're my son."  
  
"Sir…"  
  
"Ellie wasn't our second child, Josh. Abbey was pregnant a couple of years before. She miscarried at thirty-one weeks. They told us later that it was a boy. It was twenty-nine years ago, and most people outside our familes who knew will have forgotten by now. I missed seeing my son grow up. I didn't get to talk with him about his girlfriends, to yell at him when he came home blind drunk at two in the morning, to torture him with economics lectures and national parks pop quizzes in the middle of the night, to see him grow up to be the best at whatever he decided to do with his life, to see him tell perpetrators of hate crimes to take their Uzi and shove it because he was going to survive fourteen hours of surgery and be back at his desk in three months fighting the good fight. I don't miss my son anymore, Josh." His voice cracks. His eyes are bright and I'm pretty sure mine are too. "I see him every day in you."  
  
I swallow to get past the lump in my throat but he keeps right on talking.  
  
"That's why I have to apologize to you for not telling you. Because when the chips are down, I lied to you for almost four years and I do not feel good about it. I have to apologize to you so that we can be right again." I can see him feeling for the right words. "I want to be able to comfort my son in times of tragedy, celebrate with him in times of triumph, and for all the times in between, I just want to be able to look him in the eye."  
  
Okay, the lump is back. I recognize those words. I never thought he would remember what I said to him the night of his chili cookout when I turned the card in. Obviously he did. This is the point at which, if we were girls, we would cry and apologize and apologize some more. We're not girls. Thank the Lord. So he grips my hand and looks me in the eye, and I try to beat a hasty exit so I can get to my office and have the waterworks in private. I'm almost at the door when he calls me back.  
  
"We're gonna win this thing, Josh."  
  
"Yes, sir, we are."  
  
"I feel it my duty to tell you that if you don't get your act together, I will kick your ass all the way to Nantucket."  
  
"Sir?"  
  
"Ask Donna out, Josh, before the two of you drive us all crazy. The denial thing? It was kind of fun at first, but it's getting old."  
  
"Sir." I let out a short laugh. "We announced this afternoon that you would be seeking re-election. This is absolutely not the time for us to become involved in a political sex scandal."  
  
"Oh, please. We're up to our necks in 'did the President lie' and 'did CJ Cregg lie' and 'is the President going to drop dead in the middle of the Oval Office'. I think the Washington beat can deal with the fact that over the last four years my Deputy Chief of Staff has fallen head over heels for his assistant despite the fact that she won't bring him coffee."  
  
I go absolutely puce. "I don't even want to know how you know about me and Donna and the coffee thing, sir."  
  
"I work here too, Josh," he reminds me. "Go."  
  
I go. I leave the Oval Office like a bat outta hell and wander past Charlie without saying a word. I speed up as I reach the bullpen and barely make it inside my office before I lose it completely. We've all been shown, over the last few weeks, exactly what the seventh circle of hell looks like. A few times I came to within an inch of jumping ship. But we announced this afternoon that we'll be seeking re-election and that we'll win. I'll have the White House for the next five years. I'll have Donnatella Moss too, because the next time I see her I'm going to kiss her and then I'm going to ask her out. 'Cause I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States. His name is Josiah Bartlet. He's the real thing. 


End file.
